Two college students in El Paso, Texas were arrested at the U.S.-Mexico border on drug smuggling charges after replying to a job advertisement on social media to transport money across the border. Instead, the students were transporting fentanyl.
According to the El Paso Times, the students claimed that they were hired to transport money from Juárez to El Paso. However, a concealed load of fentanyl was found in their vehicle at the Bridge of the Americas as they tried to cross into the states. As a result, both students were arrested by the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office on state charges of manufacture/delivery of a controlled substance and booked into the El Paso County Jail (via El Paso Times):
The man and woman are Juárez residents with student visas who regularly cross the border to attend school in El Paso, public defense attorney Maya Quevedo said at their bond hearings.
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The students — who don't have criminal records — embarked in a perilous situation that was “impossible to stop" once it went into motion, Quevedo said.
Reportedly, the students told officers that they replied to a job ad on Facebook and met with the recruiter at a Denny’s restaurant in Juárez. There, the students left the keys in their car. Their car was taken to a dealership to install a GPS tracker device for “security reasons” before it was returned to the restaurant parking lot (via El Paso Times):
The recruiter made copies of their identification cards and told them that he had many people working for him, which the defense attorney surmised could be veiled threat meaning the newly-hired couriers were being watched. The man escorted them to near the border and instructed the students to drive to a location in El Paso.
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During a border inspection at the Bridge of the Americas, an X-ray scan detected anomalies in the car's back doors. Over a pound of fentanyl was found and seized and the students were arrested. The exact amount of fentanyl wasn't disclosed.
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According to KLAQ, the two students were victims of a cartel scam used to recruit mules. They can be paid from a couple of hundred to a couple of thousand dollars.
Last year, Townhall reported how an assistant principal at Mount Pleasant High School in Rhode Island emailed staff asking for donations for a student to pay off a human smuggler, known as a “coyote” who brought them to the United States.
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